Location: Vienna / Wiener Stadthalle (Halle D) / Austria
Date: Wednesday, 01.05.2019
The yellow brick road doesn’t just lead to Oz. In a career stretching all the way back to 1962, the one and only Sir Elton John has walked it too. The great British singer-songwriter, a figure who is one of the cornerstone definitions of pop, seems to have sensed that, at least as far as live shows go, he’s gradually reached the end of it. This year, one of the most commercially successful singer-songwriters of all time turned a venerable 72 and last September set off on his final concert tour, called Farewell Yellow Brick Road. Elton John is supposed to play his last shows on this tour in 2021. The first leg wrapped up in the US in mid-March, and after a month-long break the tour rolls on, this time on the soil of the old continent. The first two European dates were in the Austrian capital, Vienna, where Elton John sold out two nights at the famous Wiener Stadthalle, specifically its Hall D, which packs in up to 16,000 people.
On the first of the two completely sold-out Vienna nights, the man put on a marathon show that ran over two and a half hours, ticking off the most famous and commercially blockbuster chapters of his long-lived and prolific career. Over its course he’s sold, believe it or not, more than 300 million albums and collected a heap of the most prestigious awards, headed by five Grammys, and he’s even been knighted.
The sensational stage, fitted out with a vivid, sprawling backdrop screen, was also designed to create the illusion of a mirrored split, a reflection of the image. At half past seven in the evening it all kicked off. Elton John sat on the left behind his piano, in the company of his famous backing band, where beside him the team includes legendary drummer Nigel Olsson, percussionists Ray Cooper and John Mahon, additional keyboardist Kim Bullard and bassist Matt Bissonette. Longtime guitarist Davey Johnstone, meanwhile, is sitting out a few shows of the European leg to “sort out” some health issues, and has been temporarily replaced by John Jorgenson, who previously worked with Elton between 1995 and 2000.
Of course, what interested us most was the day-form of the legendary Rocket Man. The man still has all the punch of the hugely charismatic voice that made him famous. Already during the opening Bennie And The Jets, through all the delirium the crowd was unleashing, the hysterical outbursts of the women in the audience kept grabbing attention, which only confirmed the incredible popularity of this musician. Only at the start did you sense that his voice needed a little warming up. After that Elton held on to his charisma, power and charm the whole way through, the very things that define the expressive vocal strength and punch of this singer as we’ve known it across his long career. Velvety, magical, infectious. All in one. Along with superb piano playing, of course, where, despite his rather short little arms, he’s always surprised with incredible skill. And with an innate feel for getting the most musicality out of every note. At the Vienna show too, in the instrumental passages where he had room to improvise on the piano, he decisively announced his pithy musical harmonizing and ornamenting of the songs, picking motifs that are seriously catchy to the ear.
Elton John plays his songs live in a noticeably, perceptibly different way from the studio originals or the radio hits we know. For the most part everything is stretched out a bit, with playful, sparkling interplay between all the instruments woven in throughout, peaking especially in the mid-eight passages and the extended outros, which gravitate toward a kind of jam-session comedy. The songs are played faster and carry a pronounced hint of jazzy slyness, which suits them extremely well, and you can feel how the band, with Elton at the helm, is having a blast playing such sharpened, peppered-up numbers. The band’s tightness is incredible and there isn’t a single flub to be heard. Jorgenson swapped a whole series of guitars during the show, and for Tiny Dancer he even reached for a steel pedal guitar. The backing musicians complemented Elton John phenomenally, especially in harmonizing his lead vocal. That came in very handy for the legendary musician, whose voice has thickened with maturity over the years and dropped a notch, particularly in the closing stretch of his incredible show, when his voice showed signs of slight wear and he adjusted the vocal lines to stay in the middle of his range (Crocodile Rock, Saturday Night Is Alright For Fighting). The same goes for Elton’s falsetto (parts of the song Goodbye Yellow Brick Road).
Elton John, who with his genius as a composer is truly one of the mightiest hit makers ever to walk the planet, has always been a famous glam showman. Even in the times when he gave up extravagant stage outfits, he still teased with his famous collection of the most wildly designed and always deliberately oversized glasses. On this tour too, Elton swaps quite a few pairs of such specs during the show, along with some dazzlingly designed clothes, which are of course a mix of elegance, glam and a touch of the psychedelia from the turn of the sixties into the seventies. First prize went to the kitschy sky-blue suit he put on for the encore, when he played Your Song and the closing climax of the concert odyssey, which is really the centerpiece of the evening, the unforgettable Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
The sound was a slight surprise at first, as the band wasn’t mixed at an optimal arena volume. Up to the fifth song everything felt just a touch too quiet, but then things shifted noticeably. Once a looser, higher number of decibels was let loose, it of course sent adrenaline pumping through the veins of a crowd hungry for rock ‘n’ roll, and it got that in hefty doses. All of it alongside the giant moments of balladic charm from that unique and incredibly polished voice, which has always been, and remains, our faithful radio companion.
Elton John remains a great gentleman, and for his character and work all you can do is bow respectfully. In these unhealthy and unstable times, the series of hard-hitting messages offered with plenty of imaginative playfulness by the giant backdrop screen in the stage design matters a great deal, because it breaks taboos, wakes us up and expands our consciousness, calling for acceptance, liberation, tolerance, reconciliation and, of course, total surrender to true and unconditional love. The pause before Believe, by the way, Elton also used to plug his charity foundation dedicated to the fight against AIDS. In fact, he used the pauses throughout to introduce the message behind the songs he was about to tackle, always spicing his addresses with his innate sense of humor. Elton doesn’t lack passion or silliness during the show. During the songs he can turn into a real little kid, and at the end he theatrically lifts the piano lid ever so gently, then even more theatrically slams it shut.
Rocket Man sat at a movable piano. During the show it carried him from the left side of the vast stage to the right and back a few times. Constant washes of rich, dynamically shifting stage lighting, with illusory flashes of mysticism, helped along by knee-high mist, in which Elton John seemed to “paddle” across the stage on the piano like a boat. At the very end the famous musician took off his shimmering blue-and-pink coat, and the stage set, with him simply dressed in a tracksuit, carried him through a door into the sky and among the stars, which is how this nearly three-hour experience with a legend came to a close.
Elton John played Ljubljana’s Stožice arena in 2011. This so-called farewell tour won’t be coming to Slovenia, but it will stop on July 3, 2019 at the Graz fairgrounds, a venue called Messe Graz Open Air. Do yourself a favor and sail over to nearby Graz for a last get-together with this superb and unique artist and incisive citizen of the world, in the company of his unforgettable hits that make hearts tremble. In the exceptional repertoire with which Elton John took us on his final walk down the yellow brick road at the Vienna concert spectacle, the only thing missing for a moment was Blue Eyes, but after almost three hours of playing with no break whatsoever, that’s a minor remark barely worth mentioning. An Elton John concert remains a singular attraction and a performance brilliance without equal.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. Bennie and the Jets
2. All the Girls Love Alice
3. I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues
4. Border Song
5. Tiny Dancer
6. Philadelphia Freedom
7. Indian Sunset
8. Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time)
9. Take Me to the Pilot
10. Someone Saved My Life Tonight
11. Levon
12. Candle in the Wind
13. Funeral for a Friend/
14. Love Lies Bleeding
15. Burn Down the Mission
16. Daniel
17. Believe
18. Sad Songs (Say So Much)
19. Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me
20. The Bitch Is Back
21. I’m Still Standing
22. Crocodile Rock
23. Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting
—encore—
24. Your Song
25. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
